Munson: Casinos' refusal to go smoke-free puzzling

Feb. 23, 2013

Faye Kennedy, of Calamus, holds a cigarette while playing a slot machine with her husband, Bud, at Wild Rose Casino in Clinton. Smoking is permitted in gambling areas of Iowa casinos. / Register file photo

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Talk of building more casinos has cropped up after a big election year as if to give Iowans another recurring topic to argue about.

It’s sort of a caucus process: County leaders try to drum up grass-roots support for a local casino and then see if the statewide view of the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission will lavish them with licenses for new slot machine temples.

Last week was Warren County’s turn to field the casino pitch (Money! Jobs! Entertainment!), after backlash against gestures toward a casino on the other side of the Des Moines metro in Ankeny.

Linn County voters will hit the polls March 5 to determine the fate of Cedar Rapids casino plans.

Meanwhile, existing casinos try to beat back these ballot measures with predictable, humdrum turf warfare. (Iowa currently slices the pie among 18 state-licensed casinos, plus three Indian casinos.)

At least Iowans’ regional tussles over hog confinements involve a business whose ultimate goal is to put food on the family dinner table, not just shuffle money between pockets.

I know, I know: It’s a free country. People choose to gamble. So let’s make sure there’s eventually a casino on every corner so that their choice is no less convenient than on the Vegas strip.

One of the reasons touted last week for a casino in Norwalk is that the gaming complex would give Warren County its only bowling alley.

I was shocked. I didn’t realize that Indianola lacks a bowling alley. How can Simpson College students possibly have fun on weekends? Do they gather ’round a card table in the dorm for a game of pinochle? (No, they probably ante up for poker.)

But building a casino for the sake of a bowling alley would be sort of like building an entire amusement park just to install a cotton candy machine.

Here’s what befuddles me most: None of these casinos, neither the hopefuls nor the existing facilities, has gone smoke-free to gain a competitive edge. Instead, the Iowa gaming industry continues to howl just the opposite, that kicking cigarettes would cost the state as much as $80 million in lost tax revenue and some 1,500 jobs.

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I don’t get it. How does that pass a common-sense test nearly five years after smoking was banned in Iowa’s bars and restaurants?

There are hundreds of smoke-free casinos nationwide. When it comes to a lucrative customer base, haven’t we seen decades of socioeconomic data that show greater concentration of wealth among nonsmokers compared with the fewer and fewer of those who light up?

Which way do you think the smoking trend is going? If the casinos wised up, we’d be on the verge of an avalanche of stench-free slots without any need for legislation. Even sheer greed at this point should recommend going smoke-free.

“Prairie Meadows, they’d be smart to do that,” agreed Jeff Bruning, a co-owner in the Full Court Press family of 11 Des Moines bars and restaurants that saw as much as a 20 percent boost in business, he said, thanks to the 2008 Iowa Smokefree Air Act.

State Sen. Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines, continues to wrangle with a bill to end casinos’ exemption from the act, legislation that has languished in subcommittee. She’s a former state representative new this year to the Senate; she’s still getting to know her colleagues to figure out if there’s even a shot at 26 votes.

Health concerns understandably tend to lead the argument for smoke-free casinos — particularly the morality of employees wheezing in cloudy air.

Did it strike anybody else as ironic that Prairie Meadows Racetrack & Casino in Altoona paid $1million for naming rights to the 50-meter swimming pool to be built in a new downtown Des Moines YMCA? When casino revenue starts funding a health club pool, isn’t it about time to douse the cancer sticks?

And who cares if Iowa’s Indian casinos keep puffing away after state-regulated casinos quit? My bet is that eventually they, too, would be forced to join the trend as their business suffered.

It’s hard to kick the habit — as in an entrenched industry hooked on playing stubborn defense when it seems that a bold move would score a jackpot.

Iowa power lunch

More talk last week I didn’t quite understand: Where should New York City-based magazine executives “power lunch” in Des Moines if Meredith Corp. purchases Time Inc.?

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But why try to replicate a cosmopolitan Manhattan experience on the prairie? When in Rome …

So let me officially invite any Time execs to an authentic rural Iowa lunch on my tab, where the “power” is measured in the horsepower of the four-wheel-drive pickup truck or John Deere tractor parked outside the diner. Don’t worry: I won’t force you to devour a plate-sized tenderloin.

There is precedent: I shared a potluck lunch with Time columnist Joe Klein a couple of years ago in Ringgold County — in the tiny town of Ellston, population 43, where we munched on pork sandwiches and chocolate cake balls in a Methodist church hall. Klein was there to gauge the mood of the electorate.

Whenever the media want to gauge the mood of the electorate, for some reason a power lunch in the Big Apple just doesn’t fit the bill.

A beautiful obituary

Speaking of food: Beloved Des Moines restaurateur Guido Fenu has been mourned since his death Feb. 13 at age 73.

He had retired in Santa Barbara, Calif., but he forged his reputation with his landmark restaurant, Guido’s, that closed 20 years ago in the Savery Hotel downtown.

A prayer service for Fenu was held Friday in California, but there also will be a memorial in April in Des Moines — date and details TBA.

If you haven’t already seen it, be sure to read Fenu’s beautiful obituary that evokes a vivid sense of his restaurant, down to the stiff cowhide menus and zuppe inglese. The obit was the work of his widow, Josephine; his son, Mario; former Guido’s sommelier Stephen Volkmer-Jones; and friend Larry Scalise, a Des Moines attorney.

The “continental elegance” of Guido’s is mentioned — an elegance now lost, sighed Fenu’s longtime business partner, New York native Mike McGuigan.

“There is not the owner-operator of years past that’s marketed in today’s environment,” said McGuigan, who for the last 5½ years has run the Radish in Grimes.

Fenu “was a crazy man,” he added with supreme affection, “and it took an Irishman to be his partner.”

McGuigan remembered asking Fenu why he fawned over the tables of high school prom couples who spent so modestly compared with the business executives and politicians.

“I tell you, I tell you,” Fenu insisted in his thick Italian accent, “you take care of these kids, these kids will take care of you 20 years from now.”

Fenu was right to have the long view, McGuigan said. He still serves many of those very same families today.

Kyle Munson can be reached at 515-284-8124 or kmunson@dmreg.com. See more of his columns, blog posts and video at DesMoinesRegister.com/munson. Connect with him on Facebook (Kyle Munson's Iowa) and Twitter (@KyleMunson).